


But Through Your Eyes

by rionaleonhart



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Asphyxiation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-24
Updated: 2011-06-24
Packaged: 2019-07-07 07:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15903252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rionaleonhart/pseuds/rionaleonhart
Summary: Inspired by theSilent Hillseries. Charles searches for Erik in an abandoned town and perhaps finds more than he wanted to.





	But Through Your Eyes

Quiet moments at the mansion are few and far between these days. Charles has hardly settled down to read before he hears Erik passing the doorway of the room, his thoughts before his footsteps.

Charles looks up, sharply. “You’re leaving us?”

Erik pauses. “When are you going to learn,” he says, “to respect a man’s thoughts?”

“When a man is so single-minded, it’s difficult to keep oneself from overhearing,” Charles says. “What makes you think he’ll be in this place?”

Erik doesn’t answer.

Charles sets his book down on his knee. “You spoke to Miss Frost, didn’t you?”

“I had one of her guards speak to her on my behalf,” Erik says. “I’m not a fool, Charles; I wouldn’t take the knowledge of where we were within her range.”

“I know you’re not a fool,” Charles says, frowning. “So it must have occurred to you that this may be a trap.”

Erik looks at him, and Charles realises that in his mind it makes no difference. Shaw _is_ a trap, and Erik is well aware of that. If it’s not a trap, Shaw will be there; if it is, Shaw will probably still be there to kill or capture him. Either way, he finds Shaw.

“I don’t think you should meet him on his terms,” Charles says. “Wait a little longer and we can stop him together. You don’t have to face this alone.”

Erik laughs a little at that, unamused. “Of course I do. That was never in question.”

“I’m going to follow you, you know.”

Erik is silent for a moment, his hand on the doorframe. “Then follow me,” he says, eventually. “Why should it matter to me what you do?”

“For the same reason what you do matters to me, I like to imagine,” Charles says. “I really would prefer it if you stayed.”

“I would prefer to discuss this tomorrow,” Erik says.

Charles nods. “Tomorrow, then.”

-

Erik’s room is empty the next morning. Charles isn’t surprised.

-

Shaw is based near the centre of town, if Frost was telling the truth, which means that even if Shaw isn’t there Erik should be, but maps of Silent Hill are difficult to come by; it was abandoned many years ago, and Charles hasn’t the time to seek out map collectors. For now, all he has to rely on is his sense of direction and what little he has been able to glean from a heavily graffitied information board.

There’s a strange noise in this town: a constant hiss and crackle, like white noise. It’s louder in some places than in others, but it’s always there. Charles can’t imagine what could be causing it.

It isn’t important. He needs to find Erik before the man does something Charles will regret.

Charles picks his way through cracked streets and the debris of half-demolished buildings, and then he stands still for a moment in the middle of the road, trying to get his bearings, nothing around him but cold sunlight and blank grey shopfronts and the hiss of an untuned radio in his ears.

Or not in his ears. He’d assumed it was physical, because it would be very strange for anyone to _think_ in white noise, but now that he concentrates, now that he really thinks about it...

Not in his ears. In his mind.

He doesn’t know what that means. He hasn’t seen a soul since he entered this town, and he can’t imagine anyone would still be living here, but the way the noise fades in some places and becomes stronger in others seems to indicate multiple sources. An entire town full of invisible people, all thinking in static? It seems improbable.

The noise makes him feel deeply ill at ease, now that he knows it’s mental. It feels like he’s overhearing someone’s death.

He starts walking again.

-

For the most part, Charles has been working roughly north and east in search of the centre, and after a while he notices that the farther he goes the quieter the white noise seems to become, bursts of loud crackling becoming less frequent. Eventually, he starts down an east-leading road and hesitates when the noise begins to build again.

He’s been moving for some time. He could well have passed the longitudinal centre by now. And, if it’s a choice between east and north, he may as well choose the path that makes him suffer through less hissing in his mind.

He returns to the junction and resumes moving north instead, and the static becomes quieter with every step he takes. It feels like the right decision even before he finds the metal lamppost, torn from its roots and flung across the road like a tree in a hurricane.

-

A distant inhuman wailing rips suddenly through the echo of his footsteps, and Charles instinctively flinches and looks around for shelter before he consciously recognises the sound. It’s an air-raid siren, an echo of his childhood before they moved.

He looks up, but the sky is overcast; he can’t make anything out.

But this place is abandoned; why would anyone attack it? Who would be here to give warning if someone did? There can’t be any real danger. They’re not at war yet.

When he looks down again, he’s surrounded by thick fog and there’s blood smeared on the road at his feet.

-

She’s already dead when Charles finds her, lying contorted on the roadside, blood crusted over the fingers of the hand she was holding to her chest. He knows she’s dead before he’s even close enough to see her clearly through the fog, no thoughts coming through into his mind (no sound in his mind at all, in fact; he doesn’t know when the white noise stopped), but he still feels compelled to stoop and, grimacing, touch two fingers to the base of her throat.

Still warm, and he thinks _Erik_ before he thinks _Shaw_.

As he stands up, he looks at her face and feels a sudden startled twist of recognition. But no; Erik’s mother died almost two decades ago. This woman looks similar, perhaps, but not quite the same.

Charles hopes Erik hasn’t seen her.

Charles hopes, he desperately hopes that Erik hasn’t done anything stupid, if Shaw really is here.

He makes a mental note of the woman’s position so he can call the police later, and he keeps moving, a little faster than before.

-

She isn’t the last body.

Why were these people here?

-

He finds Erik in a fenced enclosure, like a prison, like a cage, instantly recognisable despite the fog. One side of the chainlink fence has been torn down and mutilated, and Charles steps cautiously over the wreckage.

Erik is sitting on the bare ground with his back turned to him, and at first (he freezes mid-step, mid-breath, his chest tightening) at first Charles thinks he’s dead.

“Erik?”

Erik turns and stands in one motion, and Charles realises why he thought he was dead: he can’t hear Erik’s thoughts at all. Erik looks alive, he moves and breathes, but his mind is a gap, a nothing. It must be the strange rusted helmet he’s wearing. It makes Charles very uncomfortable; he feels like he’s been blindfolded.

Blind as he is, he carries on. “I was beginning to worry I’d never find you.”

Erik smiles, and Charles doesn’t have to be able to look inside his mind to see that he isn’t really smiling at all; it’s a strained, tense upwards twitch of the lips, bitterly amused. “I don’t know how it took me so long to realise,” he says.

He throws something at Charles’ feet, and Charles, puzzled and concerned, stoops to pick it up.

It’s a photograph. Charles is in it, and the man he is laughing with is a man he’s seen so often in Erik’s mind that Charles almost feels as if he’s spent hours with him himself.

But he hasn’t.

“This isn’t real.” He looks at Erik. “Where did you find this?”

“I _had_ Shaw,” Erik says. “And another mutant happened to be there to keep me from following him? _Coincidentally_?”

“No,” Charles says, shaking his head, “no. I was saving your life.”

“Of course,” Erik says, with another empty smile.

This can’t happen. Someone is obviously trying to destroy their alliance by somehow creating this lie of a photograph, leaving Erik alone in his search. It won’t work. Charles isn’t going to—

There’s a terrible metallic tearing sound, and Charles looks up to see the barbed wire ripping itself from the top of the chainlink fence.

“Erik,” he says, taking a step back.

“Where is Shaw?” Erik asks, walking slowly towards him.

“Erik, I don’t know where Shaw is. I’ve never met the man.”

Erik twitches his wrist and the barbed wire lashes out, catching Charles on the arm. “Don’t lie to me, _my friend_.”

Charles hisses in pain and stumbles back, gripping the torn-through skin of his shoulder, the photograph falling to the ground. He can talk, he should be able to reason Erik back onto dry land, but he can’t hear Erik’s thoughts and how do people do this? How can anyone know what to say if they don’t know what other people are thinking?

Erik curls his fingers slowly towards his palm, and the wire curls around Charles’ neck, hovering about an inch from his skin.

“Erik, please,” Charles says, trying to keep his voice steady, trying to calm his breathing. “We trust each other, don’t we?”

“Why should I trust anyone?”

“Just – take off your helmet. Take off your helmet. That’s all I ask.”

“If I could trust you,” Erik says, “you would have no reason to ask me to do that.”

He makes a fist, and the wire tightens.

As Charles chokes, scrabbling frantically to get his fingers under the barbed wire, and maybe if he manages that he’ll be able to lever it far enough from his throat to _breathe_ , he’s only vaguely aware of Erik making another gesture. The wire around his neck pulls him downwards, forcing him to his knees. He can feel the barbs stabbing into his flesh, blood beginning to seep up around the half-rusted metal.

“ _Where is Shaw?_ ” Erik grinds out. It sounds distant somehow, even though he’s standing almost directly above him; Charles can see his boots from here, even doubled over on his knees, his face inches from the ground.

Charles tries to speak but starts coughing instead, shallow and strangled and painful, and every cough forces the barbs deeper into his neck.

He could die, he realises, although the concept seems blurry and unreal. This isn’t a matter of simply enduring the pain until it’s nothing more than a memory; he could actually die here. This could be the end of his life, choking out his last seconds on his knees, dying at his friend’s hand for a reason he doesn’t understand.

And there’s nothing he can do about it. His hands are useless; he can’t seem to remember how to move them. When he tries to reach out to Erik’s mind, all he can find is metal and silence. For perhaps the first time in his life, Charles has no control at all.

It is becoming very difficult to think.

-

“Charles?”

Hands on his sides, shaking him.

“ _Charles_ ,” Erik’s voice says, and Charles hears his mind say it as well, and that’s what tells him he’s awake.

There’s a dull pain in his skull, and the ground is gritty and uncomfortable against his cheek. When he shifts, the barbed wire shifts as well, jabbing into him; it’s still coiled around his neck, but less tight now. He can breathe.

When he opens his eyes, it takes them a moment to focus properly, although at least the fog has dispersed. Erik is kneeling blurrily beside him, his hair ruffled and sticking up with sweat. The helmet is nowhere to be seen.

Erik raises his hand, and Charles would probably flinch if he had the energy, but it isn’t an attack; the barbed wire is loosening and uncurling around his neck.

“Who did this to you?” Erik asks, the fury in his voice at odds with the very careful way in which he is drawing away the wire. “Was it those creatures?”

Charles blinks, confused. Clumsily, still refinding his mental feet, he stumbles into Erik’s mind.

There’s no deceit there. Erik doesn’t remember attacking him, doesn’t remember the photograph (Charles’ entire body tenses and he quickly scans the ground around him, but the photograph doesn’t seem to be anywhere); if his memories are to be believed, he was walking along the road, saw the enclosure, saw Charles face-down, _knew_ it was Charles, ran to him.

And Charles would love to be able to believe those memories, but he regained consciousness with his neck wrapped in barbed wire. It’s a difficult thing to explain away.

“I didn’t see who it was,” he says. “Must have taken me by surprise.”

“So much effort training the rest of us,” Erik says, the barest hint of a smile showing through his anger and concern, “and you can’t even defend yourself.” He pushes himself to his feet. “Can you walk?”

Charles hesitates. He doesn’t feel especially like moving, but it seems a waste to barely survive and then spend the rest of the life he miraculously still has here, lying in the middle of a derelict town.

Erik stoops down and holds out a hand.

Erik isn’t going to hurt him now. Charles would be able to hear if he had hostile intent. And the prospect of standing without help at this moment is rather a daunting one.

Charles struggles upright on his own, all the same.

“You asked me whether it was one of ‘those creatures’,” he says, when he feels he’s found his balance. “What creatures?”

Erik looks sceptical. “You didn’t see them? They were everywhere; they must have been the trap.”

Charles steps into Erik’s mind again to see them, eyeless and screaming and vaguely humanoid, attacking Erik from the moment he set foot in the town. Erik rips a bar from a lamppost with his powers and hurls it through one’s chest; the creature stumbles away to the side of the road and collapses, clutching its wound in an oddly human gesture, and—

—and Charles can’t watch any more. He feels a little ill.

“We should leave,” Erik says, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Shaw isn’t here.”

Charles touches a hand to his throat. The feeling of cold sharp steel still lingers there, imprinted on his memory.

“My friend,” he says, quietly, “I hope you’re right.”


End file.
